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"The Senate plans to attach Obamacare to a House-passed non-healthcare bill. Ironically, nobody knows what that legislation looks like, because it has not yet been written. Yet many members plan to rubber-stamp Obamacare without reading or understanding the bill. The Senate Finance Committee worked furiously last week to mark up a “conceptual framework” of health care reform. The committee actually rejected an amendment by Sen. Jim Bunning (R.-Ky.) to mandate that the bill text and a final cost analysis by the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) be publicly available at least 72 hours before the Finance Committee votes on final passage."...

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Computer-security flaws at the U.S. tax-collection agency expose millions of taxpayers to potential identity theft or illegal police snooping, according to a congressional report released on Monday. The Internal Revenue Service also is unlikely to know if outsiders are browsing through citizens' tax returns, because it doesn't effectively police its computer systems for unauthorized use, the Government Accountability Office found. The report was released three days after the deadline for filing personal income-tax returns, and at a time when concerns about identity theft and computer security are running high. "This lack of systems security at the...

ALEXANDRIA, Va.-Two failed civil lawsuits filed by Zacarias Moussaoui, the man accused of being a Sept. 11 conspirator, provide new glimpses into his thinking after three years of solitary confinement. In October and November, U.S. District Judge Leonie Brinkema rejected the lawsuits filed by Moussaoui against his Alexandria Detention Center guards, each seeking $20 million for "physical and verbal abuse." In his motions, Moussaoui refers to himself as a "Natural Born Terrorist" and the "Unique Best Lawyer," an apparent tribute to terrorist leader Osama bin Laden, whose first name is often spelled Usama, creating the initials UBL. Moussaoui refers...

WASHINGTON-The Senate moved toward approving $81 billion (?62 billion) for wars in Iraq and Afghanistan on Thursday in a measure that would push the total cost of combat and reconstruction past $300 billion. Both the Senate and House versions of the measure would give President George W. Bush much of the money he requested, but the chambers differ over what portion should go to military operations versus other assistance. Immigration changes, a U.S. embassy in Baghdad, military death benefits and an aircraft carrier are among the many other issues of conflict that will have to be sorted out by...

TALLAHASSEE, Fla.-Actresses Kirstie Alley and Kelly Preston pleaded with lawmakers Tuesday to prohibit schools from denying services to students who won't take mood-altering drugs to treat mental disorders. Alley sobbed as she told members of the House Education Council the stories of children who committed suicide or died after taking psychotropic drugs. "Here's an example of parents who didn't know what could happen who just blindly went along with referrals and information," Alley said before holding up blown up, color photos of children she said died after being prescribed medicines like Zoloft and Ritalin. "None of these children were...

MUSCOY - Trinidad Padilla has opened wide the doors to his home for the past four decades.  But a sunny afternoon earlier this month brought some unwelcome visitors to Rancho Padilla. Three members of an appraisal and relocation team sat with Padilla, his 67-year-old wife, Ernestine, and 38-year-old daughter Darry at their dining room table to explain Padilla's options for moving out of their Duffy Street home. The San Bernardino City Unified School District intends to build a middle school on Duffy, Blake and Darby streets where about 25 houses, including the Padillas', now stand. Padilla's son Trino showed...

The Davenport City Council has relented. It will allow residents to wash cars in their driveways or on the street without facing a $250 fine.

RENO, Nev. (AP) - The U.S. Forest Service is considering disposing of about 70 scattered lots in south Reno, and some residents are unhappy about it. They're worried the sale of the public land could pave the way for more homes and a loss of open space and wildlife habitat. "I really think the loss of open space is huge. It cannot be understatated," resident Andrew Lindsay told the Reno Gazette-Journal. Resident Bruce Smith agreed: "That's why we moved out here - to have space and land and get away from houses that are 5 feet apart from each...

LANDER -- Wind River Indian Reservation tribes could realize about $6.5 million in federal payments after the U.S. Supreme Court on Monday declined to consider the government's appeal of a lower-court ruling in favor of the tribes. Earlier this month, the Bush administration argued the Northern Arapaho and Eastern Shoshone tribes waited too long to sue the Interior Department over federal management of minerals on the reservation dating back nearly 60 years. Without comment, justices let stand the lower-court ruling that allowed most of the claims by the Wyoming tribes. The tribes allege the federal government mismanaged oil, gas,...

Ohio lawmakers plan to reintroduce legislation today that would define the southern boundary of Lake Erie "public trust lands" as the water's edge, reigniting a battle between lakefront landowners and environmentalists and sportsmen's groups. State Sen. Tim Grendell (R., Chesterfield) said the revised version of a bill he sponsored last year in the Ohio House would recognize the state's regulatory authority to protect the Lake Erie shoreline from erosion while also "acknowledging the property rights of lakefront property owners." Mr. Grendell, who moved from the House to the Senate in January, said he hopes his new position will help him...

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger moved quickly Wednesday to apologize for suggesting that California's border with Mexico should be closed in an effort to solve the nation's illegal immigration problem. Schwarzenegger said he misspoke in comments to newspaper editors and publishers Tuesday, intending to say the border should be secured. The governor blamed the error on his sometimes flawed use of English -- his second language. "Yesterday was a total screw-up in the words I used," the governor said at a press conference. "Because instead of closing, I meant securing. I think maybe my English, I need to go back to school...

Governments are building a "global registration and surveillance infrastructure" in the US-led "war on terror", civil liberty groups warned yesterday. The aim is to monitor the movements and activities of entire populations in what campaigners call "an unprecedented project of social control". The warning came from the International Civil Liberties Monitoring Group, including the American Civil Liberties Union, and Statewatch, a UK-based bulletin which tracks developments in the EU. They point to the system whereby all visitors to the US are to be digitally photographed and fingerprinted. The EU has agreed that member states must fingerprint all passport holders...

Will Tom DeLay emerge triumphant from the cloud of allegations that now threatens to engulf him? Or is the conservative Republican icon on the verge of flaming out? Anyone who assumes the latter might be advised to check the events calendar at the Capital Hilton in Washington. On May 12, the beleaguered House majority leader will be feted at a dinner hosted by influential conservative heavyweights. Their message: "Congressman DeLay has stood firm for our principles. Now it is time for conservatives to stand with Tom DeLay." In his hour of need, amid allegations of unethical behavior, and with...

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger said Tuesday the nation's policy on preventing illegal immigration is too lax, telling a group of newspaper publishers the United States needs to "close the borders." "Close the borders in California and all across Mexico and in the United States," Schwarzenegger said at the annual meeting of the Newspaper Association of America (search). "Because I think it is just unfair to have all those people coming across, have the borders open the way it is, and have this kind of lax situation." Schwarzenegger's remarks were later clarified by his spokeswoman, who said the governor supports greater security...

Former U.N. Secretary-General Boutros Boutros-Ghali was good friends with a South Korean businessman accused of accepting millions of dollars from Iraq in the U.N. oil-for-food scandal, former U.N. officials said. Tongsun Park, who was accused of trying to buy influence in Congress in the 1970s in what became known as the "Koreagate" scandals, is now accused of accepting money from Iraq while acting as an unregistered agent for Baghdad in the United States. A U.S. criminal complaint filed against Park last week also listed two unidentified high-ranking U.N. officials, sparking speculation that Boutros-Ghali might be one of them, along...

Zacarias Moussaoui, the only person in the United States charged in connection with the Sept. 11 attacks, is offering for a second time to plead guilty and a federal judge is evaluating whether to accept the plea, a legal source said Tuesday. The source, who spoke only on condition of anonymity because the matter remains sealed, said if U.S. District Judge Leonie Brinkema finds Moussaoui mentally competent to make the decision, he could enter the plea before the end of the month. Brinkema scheduled a hearing Tuesday to discuss a letter Moussaoui sent the court indicating his desire to...

(AP) - TUCSON, Arizona-The chief organizer of the Minuteman Project, which attracted hundreds of volunteers to watch for illegal immigrants and smugglers along the Mexican border, said he's leaving his post early. Jim Gilchrist said the watch project has been a success and will continue through the end of the month as planned, but under a different name. "The operation is continuing, but it's not under the Minuteman Project," Gilchrist said Monday. "There's nothing for us to do here. We're bored to death. But people are staying here." Gilchrist said he'll leave Arizona probably on Wednesday. He plans to...

PORTLAND (AP) — The cash-strapped U.S. Forest Service can no longer afford to maintain many of its parks and has started ranking recreational sites, including campgrounds and trailheads, for possible closure. Oregon’s Deschutes and Winema national forests are among the first to go up for review, The Oregonian reported. Forest Service officials say the crunch is partly a result of President Bush’s Healthy Forest Initiative, a push to thin flammable Western forests, which has diverted money away from the upkeep of forest facilities. The Forest Service is also trying to sell offices and compounds that bustled during the logging...

Virtually unnoticed by the media, property rights have become the new, hot issue before federal courts. This term, the U.S. Supreme Court has taken an unprecedented six property cases on questions ranging from what makes for a "public use" requiring compensation from government under the Fifth Amendment (Kelo v. City of New London) to defining protections for intellectual property (MGM v. Grokster, Ltd.). Now the U.S. District of Columbia Circuit Court of Appeals is considering a full court, or en banc, review of a case (Stearns v. the United States) that could prove as pivotal as any before the...

A North Dakota bill asking colleges to assess the English skills of teaching assistants kicks up a storm of controversy. When Bette Grande heard her son and his friends complain that they couldn't understand their foreign-born teaching assistants, she urged them to sit in the front row. But when she talked with other undergraduates at North Dakota universities, she decided that might not be enough. "The students ... were pretty much just being brushed off, or were told it was up to them to accept the diversity ... or listen harder," she says. There ought to be a law,...